


The Road Home

by patternofdefiance



Series: Gifts from the Sea [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bad Communication, Beach Sex, Bottom!Sherlock, Come play, Complex Emotions, Consentacles, Emotional Sex, Explicit Consent, M/M, OctoJohn, Oral Sex, PWP, Relationship Anxiety, Switching, Tentacle Porn, Tentacle Sex, a touch of magical realism/fantasy, bottom!John, can it be one?, explicit content, followed by some good communication, is that a term?, ish, not mpreg, relationship fears, sea side sex, sort of, tentacle!John, top!John, top!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:09:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“John – John? Wake up.”</p><p>John peels his eyelids apart and lifts his head from where it had settled between the car’s headrest and the rattling window with a groan. It takes him a moment to realise that the window isn’t rattling anymore, and then he nearly pitches out headfirst when Sherlock opens his door without warning.</p><p>“John, come on!”</p><p>When had they pulled over? When had Sherlock gotten out of the car?</p><p>“Urhhhh,” John says, rather eloquently, he feels, undoing his seatbelt. After two botched attempts, he manages to make his hands coordinate to push the release button and pull the strap in a useful way, and then he’s finally stumbling out of the car, his feet sinking – sinking? – into –</p><p>“Sand?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [consulting_smartass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_smartass/gifts).



> Because CS is the best person ever and increases the universe's background radiation of awesome by a noticeable amount just by existing. <3
> 
> On a writer-y note:  
> Sometimes it takes me two and a half months to write a story - sometimes it takes two and a half nights. This story is one of the latter cases, mostly because I had no idea if I'd be able to pull it off until I sat down and just wrote it, but also because this world is just too delightful to not dive in headfirst in the deep end.  
> That said, the ever-fantastic [pangodillO](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pangodillO/pseuds/pangodillO) did the world's fastest and most excellent beta-run on this this morning at 4:38 am, a few minutes after I sent it over.  
> This is sort of a long winded way of saying the usual: this was fast, and if there are glaring errors, please let me know ^_^
> 
> My thanks to the AntiDiogenes gang for support and gifs of crabs waving sea anemone pom-poms.
> 
> (Also, y'all have no idea how close I came to pun'ing all over this story, NO IDEA...)

“John – John? Wake up.”

John peels his eyelids apart and lifts his head from where it had settled between the car’s headrest and the rattling window with a groan. It takes him a moment to realise that the window isn’t rattling anymore, and then he nearly pitches out headfirst when Sherlock opens his door without warning.

“John, come on!”

When had they pulled over? When had Sherlock gotten out of the car?

“Urhhhh,” John says, rather eloquently, he feels, undoing his seatbelt. After two botched attempts, he manages to make his hands coordinate to push the release button and pull the strap in a useful way, and then he’s finally stumbling out of the car, his feet sinking – _sinking?_ – into –

“Sand?” John shakes his head and tries to clear the film from his thoughts. It had been a mad week, capped off with an even madder 40 hours of non-stop deductions and danger and daring-do. It had been _glorious_ , but John had also been exceedingly relieved to have the case solved – because that meant rest was no longer out of the question.

It meant going home, and – while the not-so-sleepy little village of Wrentham had been a non-stop treat of thrills and bizarre deaths for not-so-human ex-army-doctor adrenaline junkies and all-too-human consulting detectives alike – going home was what John craved now, right down into the hollows where his water used to sit.

But it seems as if Sherlock has other plans – or perhaps had them all along. John frowns as he shuffles his loafers against the sand’s all-at-once familiar and unexpected shifting surface. He should have known Sherlock had something up his sleeve when he suggested renting a car for the trip up there and back, and then insisted on taking the scenic route.

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock urges, and John looks up then, still blinking back the half-sleep his body had managed to scrape together, his tours in distant, drier sands having taught him how to be awake and aware despite aching fatigue. He does so now, trying to absorb as much of his surroundings as possible, in case this isn’t a planned stop, in case this is the beginning of some new trouble.

Their landrover is parked at the end of a track that does not seem very official – little more than a swath of browner grass and flatter earth. In the distance, back the way they came, John can just make out a chain gate hanging suspended across the track, and while he cannot read the sign, he’s almost certain it says something to the effect of ‘No Trespassing.’

In front of John there is sand and sea and Sherlock – and it’s Sherlock that clues John in that they’re not in any sort of danger: he’s standing a little ways away with his shoes and socks off, his long, wriggling toes rooting into the sand, while the rest of him is still the picture of posh, city propriety – suit and coat and all, despite the steadily warming day. Behind him, the morning sun is striking the inky blue water, and it becomes a series of silver slivers laid over a deeper darkness, to the effect that Sherlock is outlined in light and shadow, backlit by the sea.

John rakes his eyes over Sherlock’s silhouette, thinking that rest isn’t the only thing back on the menu now that the Work has been satisfied. “What’s going on? Fancy a swim, all of a sudden?” John asks, and god isn’t that an idea? Sherlock in the waves, the push-pull, the rush of water all over all of that skin…

Sherlock frowns at John like he’s being slow – and he probably is, given he’d just woken after god-knows how few hours of sleep and is now engaging in the barest bit of waking dreaming. “Don’t you recognise this place, John?” Sherlock asks, eyebrows still tucked close to each other.

John blinks, glances up and down the beach, then back at Sherlock, about to ask what he’s on about – when suddenly his brain comes online, and he realises where they are, where _he_ is, just before Sherlock says:

“This is where you came ashore, John.”

John gapes at Sherlock, because it isn’t a question, and it doesn’t have to be; there’s no question about the veracity of his statements.

Now that he’s awake and paying attention, the grit of the sand (not a fine grain, but not quite coarse gravel, with a smattering of smoother stones, tan and rust and white all at once), the slightly sticky caress of the breeze (heavy with salt and moisture and the mounting heat of the day), the very sound the waves make as they rush in and _shushhhh_ back out (the pebbles turning and rolling and settling as water fills the spaces between them before sluicing back towards the sea, frothing as it goes, only to be plowed into the beachfront again by the next incoming wave), all of it is suddenly obvious, undeniable.

And god – the _smell_ : layered and laced with the feel and the sight and the insistent, absolutely _drenched_ sound of the waves’ endless churning, the delicate fractal intertwining of scents has John turning his gasp into a long inhale, land-lungs and esophageal gills straining to take in as much air as possible. He tastes the fiddlehead curl of damp sand, the salt-bitter lashing of sunbaked seaweed, the soft opacity of steam as warm rocks shed each wave’s wet caress into the air. Tucked into and under those smells-becoming-tastes resides the cloy of brine, of life and death too small to see, the microscopic decay and proliferation that advance and retreat with the tide, marking out moments and hours and days with new lines carved into the sand.

John is hard-pressed not to fall to his knees at the rush of it all, the relentless assail of his senses. He works to breathe less deeply, lightheadedness already staking its claim as he fights to keep from drowning in oxygen. “ _How_?” he asks at last, voice a little hoarse, and he would love to blame it on the salt edge to the air, but his throat was made to breathe this air, current difficulties notwithstanding.

Sherlock glances at John, then away again, a half-smile tucked quickly away, as if not sure of its welcome. “It wasn’t difficult,” he begins, his voice just a little smug, but not cruel as it can be when deducing others’ secrets. “You mentioned a beach near London, one where evidence of human activity was near non-existent, and where the water was cleaner, more palatable. Taking into account the currents and the predominant pollutants about twenty years ago and that leaves a few areas of relatively ‘clean’ beach front along the coast North of London. One of those is near Felixstowe – but the presence of a bustling ferry system and some major shipping routes rules it out.” Sherlock rocks on his bare feet, hand sin his coat pockets, just as if he were at a chalk outline, explaining how it came to be necessary.

“Next on the list,” he continues, “is Lowestoft – but the rather developed and sub-developed nature of most of the beachfront property makes it an unlikely landfall choice for someone trying to avoid notice, especially since most of the structures have been in place for at least twenty-five to thirty years. So,” Sherlock says with a grin tossed at John, caught up in his own cleverness and the flow of his sentences, his words rolling from his mouth like pebbles in the wash, “that leaves this place: just South of Dunwich, but North of the Bird Sanctuary of Minsmere.”

He flashes a tight smile and lifts a hand from a pocket and sweeps it out to his side, indicating the beach around them. “Clean, quiet, and within walking distance of the duller necessities like food and clothes.” Sherlock pauses, then blinks at John when he doesn’t snort or roll his eyes, as he normally would at one of Sherlock’s jabs at basic survival requirements. A shadow creeps into Sherlock’s eyes, but John doesn’t have any sort of superficial reaction to give to Sherlock right now, too caught up in a flood of memories, moments and decisions he hasn’t revisited in years.

Sherlock clears his throat. “John…surely you must have known we were close?” he asks, then falls silent, his words run out at last, and John looks back just in time to see doubt flit minnow-fast across Sherlock’s features. _Doubt at what, though?_ John wonders distantly. His conclusions? Himself? Neither is likely, and John struggles to pin down Sherlock’s expression, understand it, even as he recovers from the impact of his surroundings. With Sherlock, he’s learned, it pays to focus on the fleeting – but Sherlock’s question distracts John, reels his thinking away from Sherlock’s uncharacteristic uncertainty, refocuses it on the answerable, the knowable:

Certainly, John had been aware of the beach – not this specific one, mind, but rather the beach in general; the edge of the sea – the entire time they’d been in Wrentham. John, by dint of genetics, is always aware of proximity of the ocean, in the same way that he knows which way is up and which way is down, and that North, South, East, and West aren’t going to swap places overnight. He’d known Wrentham was a forty-five minute stroll from the sea in the same way he’d known that it would take five days of relentless hike to get from where he’d been deployed during his first tour to where blue water licked up against the scorched and wounded land.

John had thought it a sort of whimsical biological quirk, an unnecessary precaution for a species that never left deep water – but recently it had proved more useful than that. Knowing his distance from the sea had helped Sherlock find him just five weeks ago, when he’d been snatched in an attempt to coerce Sherlock into dropping a case. (It turns out ‘the cellar has no windows, is a bit damp, and is made of some kind of lime-y clay blend’ doesn’t give genius consulting detectives much to work with – but add in ‘oh, and it’s less than two hours’ walk from the nearest body of saltwater,’ and suddenly finding John is ‘elementary’ and ‘quite simple, really’ and so on).

So _of course_ John knew they were close to the ocean (and therefor the beach) – but knowing the sun rises in the East is a little different to waking up with a blinding eyeful of light.

John blinks and clears his throat. “I…it’s unexpected,” he starts, then stops. He decides on bluntness, despite the usual, diminishing effect that has on Sherlock’s ability to refrain from rolling his eyes. “I don’t understand,” he says, and awaits the scornful explanation with a resigned sigh.

It doesn’t come.

John takes a step forward, squinting past the light to see that Sherlock’s shoulders are up and forward, his lower lip reddened from where he’d been worrying it – one of the few tells John has managed to decode as having to do directly with John. “Sherlock?” he asks. He feels he’s missing something, and while that’s not a new feeling, this time it seems important in the way that traces of ash or dog hair are not.

“You don’t like it.” Sherlock’s voice is a tight blankness layered over something that wants to be the opposite.

John shifts his weight, uncertain of what to say, to do, to make this uncertainty resolve itself. “Like….what, exactly?”

“This. Here. That I brought you.” Sherlock looks down at his hands clasped in front of him, and John doesn’t miss how they’re keeping each other steady, still.

John blinks and frowns, then takes a step forward. He grimaces – there’s sand in his shoes already _somehow_ – so he toes off both shoes, discards his socks, and then comes to stand directly in front of Sherlock. “Hey,” he says softly, when Sherlock looks away up to the North slant of the beach instead of meeting his gaze. “What’s this about?” he asks. “Please tell me?”

The water’s nearby hushing and the shivering of the stones seems like a bid for lowered voices, though they are alone on the beach. “If this was supposed to be a surprise,” John says when Sherlock doesn’t speak, “then colour me surprised.” He quirks his lips into something like a grin, to let Sherlock know it’s a joke, if a weak one. The grin fades and he says, “If it was meant as…as a gift –?”

“It wasn’t,” Sherlock says, and it would be sharper if not for the fact that his voice is matching John’s in tone and volume.

“Then what was –” John begins, but Sherlock cuts him off:

“I don’t _know_ ,” he says, and there’s a desperation to his voice, a sort of hushed urgency, as if he’s questioning his motives, or his execution, or everything all at once.

And just like that, all at once, John knows. Sherlock’s hands clasped, his eyes angled away, his shoulders hunched: nerves.

“Was it a… test?” John asks.

“No – why would I – _no_ ,” Sherlock snaps back, but it’s too quick, and John sighs as he runs a hand through his hair – slightly shaggier than he likes it, but Sherlock’s fingers can’t seem to get enough of it, the barely-there curls at his nape.

“Sherlock, what are you worried about?” John tries to peer up into Sherlock’s downcast eyes, but again there is silence and Sherlock withholds his gaze. “You think – what? That I’ll up and off into the sea one day? Leave a post it note on the skull? ‘It’s been fun, good bye forever, --John’?”

The way Sherlock tries not to wince tells John everything he needs to know.

“Hey,” he says, shuffles even closer in the sand, “hey, listen,” and he takes Sherlock’s hands where they’ve clenched inside their coat sleeves, just cups those fists with his palms, standing so close now that their bare toes are bumping and chafing against each other in the grit. “That’s not going to happen, Sherlock.”

Sherlock makes a noise, swallows, and then says: “You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can,” John insists, hands squeezing Sherlock’s for emphasis. “I chose you, yeah? And you chose me. We chose each other – as _mates_ – you don’t think that means something?”

“You could choose to leave,” Sherlock says, and John’s chest and throat hurt to hear how much Sherlock doesn’t want that sentence to be true.

“I could,” John agrees. “As could you.”

Sherlock’s eyes close and he clenches his jaw. “I wouldn’t.”

“Will you believe me when I tell you the feeling’s mutual?” John asks, trying to put all of his earnest faith into his words. Sherlock rarely airs his doubts, but this shadow of uncertainty has been lurking for some time now, John thinks, gaining momentum in unacknowledged uncertainty.

Sherlock grimaces. “How can it be?” he asks bitterly. “There’s so much I can’t do – for you, with you –”

 _Ah_ , John realises, knows where to lay the blame for some, if not most, of Sherlock’s fear: his Tide – or the lack thereof, rather.

Since his onset Tide with Sherlock three months ago, there hasn’t been another – and now, despite John not being concerned or upset in the least, it seems as if Sherlock has decided to take all the worrying on himself. “You’re still worried I’m going to decide I need someone like me? Sherlock –”

“John,” Sherlock interrupts with a shake of his head, his jaw tightening for a moment, “just, don’t –”

“No, _you_ don’t,” John cuts in. Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, but John won’t have it. “I’ve lived in two worlds now, Sherlock – I think that means I am uniquely qualified to decide which one I want to live in, and with whom.” He pulls Sherlock’s hands forward and together, brushes a kiss along their knuckles. “And that’s you, you daft genius.”

“But,” Sherlock says, then pauses to swallow, “your –”

“ _I don’t care about my Tide,_ Sherlock,” John insists. “I went without for _decades_ ; having it with you was a complete surprise – wonderful and brilliant and perfect, yes – but still completely unexpected, unlooked-for.” John looks up into Sherlock’s eyes, tries to will the meaning across the space between them. “Even if I never have one again, I won’t miss it – the best part of my Tide wasn’t what happened during – it was what happened after, between us.”

He feathers another kiss against the back of Sherlock’s hands, notices them trembling. “Will you come here?” he asks then, opening his arms to receive Sherlock – and then nearly pitches back as Sherlock just slumps into him, arms twining around him in a passable imitation of an octopus.

The back of John’s throat is briny and gruff with words he should say, hasn’t properly said – neither of them has – but then, he’d thought perhaps Sherlock didn’t want those words, didn’t need them. Now he’s realizing how wrong he was – and he has to shift some of the blame to this, his neglect, his failure to let Sherlock know, make him understand, just how much this means to John, how much _he_ means to John.

They’d been living together so long before John’s Tide came in, and then choosing each other had happened so quickly after Sherlock discovered John’s true nature, and somehow in between knowing each other better than anyone else and choosing to spend the rest of their lives together, they seemed to have missed an important step. But understanding it doesn’t excuse it, and John needs to fix it, now, needs to wash the worry from the downward cast of Sherlock’s eyes, the downward slope of the corners of his mouth.

“You know –” John’s voice hitches, and he clears his throat once, twice, “– there’s something I haven’t said – we haven’t said –” and John could kick himself for that last bit, for presuming, because suddenly he’s not sure; maybe Sherlock really doesn’t want to have this said out loud –

“You don’t have to,” Sherlock says hurriedly, body suddenly tense against John’s once more, and John hesitates before asking:

“What if – what if I want to, though?” And then Sherlock’s breath stills with a hitch, and John holds him as tight as he can and says, “I love you.”

Sherlock pushes out a breath and then snatches another one in, and then just holds it again.

John rubs his back, arms and ribs almost creaking with how tight he’s holding Sherlock, his mate, the man he loves with every last geographically-misplaced inch of himself. John clears his throat, trying to cough away the aching tightness that wants to still his breath. “I love you,” he says again, “ _so much_. And that’s not going to change, alright?” He lets his arms slip down to settle in the natural curve of Sherlock’s back and waist. “I should have said it before. I’m sorry I waited so long.”

Sherlock shakes his head, mute, pressed close enough that the motion simply presses his cheek and jaw against John’s neck more firmly. John isn’t quite sure what Sherlock’s disagreeing with, so he just presses on:

“We’re going to disagree sometimes,” John says, “or we’ll bicker, or we’ll fight about stupid things and important things, but at the end of it, we’ll still be together, ok?”

Sherlock nods against his neck this time, manages another sudden, sharp breath, and is silent again.

“I chose you for a reason, Sherlock Holmes, and it had nothing to do with the Tide. I told you I was gone on you way before that. You wanting me back – well – that’s just extra,” John says, sniffing and blinking and more annoyed at the salty sting of the air than ever.

“No – not ‘wanting,’” Sherlock says then, voice tight, near breathless, and John’s heart stops, cut to the quick for the moment before Sherlock says: “ ‘loving’.” He pulls back, and John can see his eyes are red, his cheeks dry, the peculiar opposite of his sham tears. “Loving you back,” he reiterates.

John’s throat locks up with a click of a swallow, and Sherlock nods as if he asked a question, and then they meet in the middle, the would-be embrace becoming a press of a kiss, just their mouths against one another. They stand like that for ages, it seems, holding each other tightly, their lips pushed together, barely breathing – until at last they do, and each inhale is a little less shaky than the last, each exhale a little less desperate sounding, until they are holding each other close, breathing and looking, and not much else.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says after a long spell, head resting against John’s neck.

“Don’t be,” John gruffs. “I should’ve said something – explained – I shouldn’t have assumed –”

“I should have asked,” Sherlock points out, “instead of springing a trip home on you.”

“Sherlock, this isn’t _home_ ,” John says with fond exasperation. “It’s a beach. Clean, yes, quiet, sure, and convenient – definitely. But it was – and is – just a beach.”

Waves punctuate the silence that follows, and Sherlock bites at his lip for a bit. “Would you like to leave?” Sherlock asks at last, and John is gratified to see the consideration in those storm-swell eyes, and the concern. “We don’t have to stay –”

“Just a beach,” John reiterates, and Sherlock shuts his mouth with a snap, looking sheepish. “It’s alright, Sherlock – I’m not upset about being here. Really. I’m actually still sort of bowled over that you even found it – and don’t tell me it was easy, I’ve been here before and I’m not sure I could have found my way back to this exact spot.” John’s mouth hitches up into a sideways grin.

“That’s because you don’t pay attention to what’s around you,” Sherlock points out helpfully, and John laughs and takes his hand firmly in his own.

“Or maybe I had freshly altered my physiology and had more important things on my mind?” He tugs on Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock follows with a huff as John leads the way down the beach, closer to where the water breaks endlessly, their bare feet pressing shallow dents into sand as they go. “Hmm,” John says when they reach the water’s ever-shifting edge. Sherlock’s eyes narrow.

“What?” he demands. His voice is imperious despite the fading edge of raw transparency.

John purses his lips. “This… isn’t quite the right spot, actually.”

“Oh really?” Sherlock asks, his exasperation only half-exaggerated.

John snorts. “Come on, I’ll show you – this way,” John says, and with a jerk of his head, leads the way up the North curve of the beach.

After a few steps, they both stop to roll up their trouser legs, the surf splashing and swirling about their bare ankles with gusto.

“The water’s _freezing_ ,” Sherlock grumbles, and John laughs, reclaiming his hand.

“Oh, is it?” John asks mildly. “I hadn’t noticed…” In actuality, he feels Sherlock’s being a tad unfair. The water’s no cooler than any other ocean he’s been in – and what’s more, it feels lovely on his skin, almost fizzy where it curls around and bathes his skin.

Sherlock shoots him a glare but doesn’t snatch away his hand, and John feels buoyant from that small touch alone.

They slosh along, John coaxing Sherlock a little deeper every few paces, and Sherlock letting him – until John feels the sand beneath his feet grow just a hair finer; the pebbles only lie on the surface now, pillowed on softer, whiter sand. “This,” John says, bending low to snatch a handful of sand and silt and pebbles. He holds it so Sherlock can take a sampling and smear it between his fingertips. “This feels…right.”

“Quite rich, for sand,” Sherlock says, mercurial eyes fixed on his fingers. “Organic matter – decayed vegetation – the marshes must start just over that rise.” He points beyond the gentle slope of the sand, and sure enough, the colour of the sand browns into a reddish brown clay, and when the wind shifts for a moment, the dense, borderline rank smell of a salt marsh is unmistakable.

“There,” John points, looking up along the beach – and yes, that’s it: a small cluster of boulders, deposited long ago by a storm, and since weathered into a little alcove, an open air grotto-cum-tide pool. “That’s where I came up.” Sand has buried the structure a little deeper than he recalls, but aside from that, the shape of it, the silhouette against bright blue sky, is unchanged.

Without discussing it, they both aim for the outcropping, picking their steps carefully as they approach water chopped and swirled into little eddies by the rocks, until at last they clamber up onto the lip of the closest rock and peer inside. There, protected from wind and notice on all sides by stacked boulders, is a little inlet: a slope, smooth as anything, of the finest, palest sand, curving gently down into the water. Water licks up along that sand, the waves tame, their approach dulled by the steady slope and the stone wave breakers.

Letting loose a laugh, John hops down into the shallow water, landing with a splash, and Sherlock follows, coat flaring and then hanging just above the water’s shifting surface. Inside, reflected light from the water’s surface dances against fine veins of some shimmering mineral in the rocks, and the sea’s breathy hush is close, amplified without being overbearing. The sand is silky soft against their feet, the water clear, continually replaced by gentle waves.

Sherlock arches an eyebrow at John after he turns to take in the space and says, “Good choice,” and John cannot help the grin that shapes his mouth.

“Thanks.” John raises his eyebrows as he puts on a worldly air: “I like to think I know my way around a beach.”

Sherlock snorts, then frowns. “Does anyone else know? About this place?” He runs a finger down along the rock, avoiding barnacles and mussels lower down.

“No – you’re the only person I’ve ever told.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No, I don’t mean me – or humans or whatever,” Sherlock says with a flap of his hand. “I mean – did any of _your_ people know?”

“Oh.” John blinks. “No.”

“No?” Sherlock asks, incredulous.

John shakes his head. “I think I was the first of us in….three generations? to seek out dry land.” John shrugs. “No one else was interested – why bother going further than necessary? Deeper water had everything we needed.”

“But you wanted more,” Sherlock says, the barest curl upwards of his voice at the end, a hesitation John wouldn’t have expected or known to watch for, before today.

“I wanted….different,” John says, trying to taste the words as he says them, trying to make sure they’re the right ones. This new vulnerability Sherlock seems to be offering – it’s important, and John is loathe to reward it with flippant answers. He considers carefully before adding, “I wanted…new.”

They both stand and watch the waves come in for a bit. For all that it’s just a beach, the sound is soothing and refreshing, the salt and the sun somehow replenishing, despite John’s interrupted sleep.

“Has the shine worn off, yet?” Sherlock asks suddenly, and John hears the echo of that worry in that question. He leans his head against Sherlock’s shoulder.

“No signs of that,” he says with a playful nudge to Sherlock’s side, and Sherlock snorts and then bumps his hip back a few seconds later, as if he’d had to work out whether it would be alright to do so. There’s the barest hint of a flush high on his cheeks, and John bites his at his own lower lip and savours that expression – Sherlock, bashful, slightly awkward, but trying nonetheless.

After a moment, biting his own lip isn’t good enough, and John slips a hand up along Sherlock’s neck and jaw, telegraphing his movements, his wants, and Sherlock looks pleased and surprised as he dips down, lets John place a kiss, take a kiss – and then it’s less about exchanging kisses and more about handing the same one back and forth, tongues and teeth coming into play, until John has Sherlock’s lower lip between his teeth, lightly tugging, and Sherlock’s eyes are fluttering shut even as his mouth drops open, shallow breaths tumbling out.

John’s arms are around Sherlock now, holding him close, and he feels the tremors again. “Cold?” he asks between kisses, between breaths. The waves push in steadily, a little higher now, and John’s blood and bones tell him that tide is coming in, slowly, inevitably. “We can go back up on dry land, or –?”

Sherlock shakes his head, and moves back a little – to shrug off his coat and place it high up on a ledge formed by the rocks framing their little grotto, sighing at the now dripping lower hem of it. “Phone?” he asks John, and John shakes his head.

“Car,” he says. There’d been no need to bring his mobile – not with Sherlock in sight, at hand, and delightfully post-case. John’s fingers feel hot, buzzing, hungry for touch, for skin, for Sherlock.

“Wallet?” Sherlock asks next, and this John relinquishes, watching as Sherlock stretches to stash John’s affects with his own inside the folds of the belstaff. When he turns back, his face is shading more obviously flushed, but his voice is clear and steady as he says, “Shirt next. Please.”

John grins, pushes forward and up, and gets his mouth on Sherlock’s again, gets his hands up between their chests, and starts to unbutton Sherlock’s white shirt. Sherlock squawks in surprise, into the kiss, into John’s mouth, and John pulls back on a laugh.

“You didn’t specify _which_ shirt,” he points out, and Sherlock huffs out a breath, letting his hands rest on John’s biceps. “So I decided to take pity on these buttons,” John teases, and Sherlock smacks his hand away.

“There’s nothing wrong with my shirts or their buttons,” Sherlock says, indignant, and John leans forward to inhale against the newly exposed V of Sherlock’s chest.

“Mmmh,” John hums. “I –” he places a kiss right in the center of Sherlock’s chest, “absolutely –” and then another kiss goes right under Sherlock’s clavicles, “agree,” he breaths into Sherlock’s suprasternal notch. John slips his hands up along Sherlock’s collar bones, curving over his shoulders, pushing the open shirt back and off and down, until only the cuffs keep it in place. Sherlock’s breathing picks up again, and John can feel his heart beat jumping beneath his skin, a different sort of wave hitting a different sort of shore.

Sherlock shivers delicately, and his nipples peak under John’s returning thumbs. “John –”

John turns his attention to his own shirt – only to have his hands pushed aside. He lets his palms settle on Sherlock’s hips, thumbs stroking over his prominent hipbones while Sherlock’s long fingers deftly open and remove his shirt, wrists still trapped in the fine, white fabric of his cuffs.

When John’s shirt peels away, he leans in again, presses against Sherlock’s chest with his own, lets his hands slide down Sherlock’s arms to grasp shirt cuffs and just hold them, hold him – Sherlock – still as he kisses him, kisses him, kisses –

They break apart, panting, Sherlock’s cheeks flagged high with arousal, the dark curls of his hair a tempest halo.

“This – I –” Sherlock tries, stops, swallows, and John releases his wrists from their fabric prison.

“Is this alright?” he asks, and Sherlock is panting, but he makes space between the rushed breaths to say, “Yes, obviously.”

“Obviously, hmm?” John asks, leaning in again to taste Sherlock’s skin. He wants to soak in this, the slow reveal and gift of Sherlock, is skin, his want.

“Well,” Sherlock says, breathless again as his chest arches up into John’s testing bite, “I _am_ seducing you.”

John’s breath hitches and then stumbles into a laugh, and Sherlock’s looking down at him, half indignant, half amused, his mouth a wry twist, his eyebrow an unimpressed arch. God help him though, Sherlock’s combination of hesitation and decisiveness will always be John’s undoing – Sherlock is so confident in every other facet of his life, of their lives, that in this one area where uncertainty still crops up, his brazen bluffing is endearingly obvious, disarmingly tender and sweet, and John has absolutely no defenses against its charms.

“You’re doubting me?” Sherlock asks archly, even as he uses the stone slab behind him as leverage to push against John. For all his sometimes shyness, when skin meets skin, his reservations have a tendency to evaporate.

“Never,” John says, practically into Sherlock’s mouth. “Consider me seduced,” he murmurs into Sherlock’s ear, lipping the edge of it, then smearing kisses down along Sherlock’s neck. “I’m yours now, here, however you want.”

Sherlock’s breath punches out of him. “John –”

“What do you want?”

“I – you –” Sherlock pauses, swallows, “trousers,” he manages, and John’s hands surge up to open and invade, and when they recede, they drag Sherlock’s trousers back down along the smooth, pale lines of his legs. Sherlock barely manages to get John’s jeans unbuttoned and shoved down before John leans in again, too close for Sherlock’s hands to accomplish much, and just breathes in the scent of Sherlock’s skin.

“Gorgeous,” he presses the word into one sparsely haired thigh, bites over that patch, then kisses it softly, soothingly. “Brace yourself on my shoulders.” He waits for Sherlock’s hands to settle against his skin, and then he helps him step out of his half-dry, half-damp trousers and pants, and then Sherlock is naked before him, a siren or some other human myth – an elemental given shape.

John sinks to his knees, overcome, beyond caring for the sodden state of his own remaining clothes.

“Sherlock –” he begins, only to fall silent as Sherlock looks down at him, lips parted, eyes darkened, and skin flushed, his chest and cheeks rouged everywhere John touched him. “Sherlock, please –”

“John, _yes_ –”

John takes Sherlock into his mouth, the last vestiges of softness erased by John’s lips and tongue. Sherlock’s breath comes in sharp whines and gasps now, his hips juddering with each new twist or lick John bestows, his voice strangely loud in the space, cupped close by the stacked tumble of rocks.

John, for his part, can barely spare thought to breathe, never mind make any noise himself. Sherlock is hot and heavy in his mouth, a puzzle piece slotting home, and John can’t stop touching and stroking what skin he can find, his own nerve endings ablaze with sensation – skin and salt and the swirling waves, the sand and pebbles shifting beneath his feet and knees, Sherlock’s fingers tangling with the breeze in his hair, the smell and feel of his skin like sun-blanched driftwood, and everything about him, about this moment, is a heady elixir, one John intends to drink down, to drown in.

“John,” Sherlock gasps, “John, I –”

John makes an encouraging sound, pushes closer, takes him deeper, and Sherlock stiffens with a cry before his hips shudder into motion, twitching and pressing forward even as he curls over John, as if he wants to envelop him, as if he can no longer keep up right. John’s skin lights up in sympathy, pleasure ghosting along his flanks, his spine, his legs, and his fingers clutch convulsively at Sherlock’s hips, as if addicted to that touch, that pressure.

Sherlock’s come is metallic, brackish, tasting of deeper waters, and John swallows it down, some part of his physiology welcoming it, as if a part of Sherlock belongs inside him, always.

When Sherlock’s final shivers switch into over-sensitised twitches, John pulls off, whispers, “Shh, come down here, right here, yes –” as Sherlock folds into a boneless heap in John’s lap. His limbs are shaking and his head is buried against John’s neck once more.

John reaches up to stroke Sherlock’s cheek, his neck, the back of his ribcage, all the way down his legs to his ankles. He smiles when Sherlock hums into his neck, twisting a little, like a cat settling closer, and John feels overcome by this – Sherlock close and content, smelling of sex, limp from release, pressed against him like a limpet to a rock. He twines his arms around his back and holds him tight, letting the waves rocked them slightly, to and fro, even as he continues his light, stroking touches along Sherlock’s body.

It takes them both a few minutes, but then they both stiffen in realization at the same time.

“John?” Sherlock asks, leaning back. His eyes are wide and hope-filled, but also somehow panicked.

John opens his mouth, shuts it, then shakes his head and shrugs. His hands are still clasped behind Sherlock’s back – which means that neither of his hands is responsible for the soothing strokes he’s been trailing along Sherlock’s skin.

“You – is it your –?” Sherlock asks, but John shakes his head.

“Not my Tide,” he says, even as one tentacle – the ventral right – curls over Sherlock’s thigh, giving his quivering leg a squeeze. “It’s – it doesn’t _feel_ like a Tide, at least,” John amends as his left ventral tentacle loops up around Sherlock’s waist and provides a sturdy support for his mate’s spine.

“Then – how –” but Sherlock closes his eyes before finishing the question. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s the water here,” he says, and there a resigned hollowness to his voice that slices along John’s jaw and throat. “It’s what’s missing at Baker Street, what I can’t –” he swallows.

“Sherlock, stop,” John says at last, shaking his head to try and focus beyond the awakening in his skin. “Nothing is _missing_ from home – I had my first bloody Tide _ever_ there.” He shifts Sherlock so he can look up into his eyes. “With _you_.” He lifts a hand to run a thumb along Sherlock’s cheekbone, wanting to wipe away the sadness in his expression, the anguished acceptance in his eyes. “If anything is missing from anywhere, then it’s that you were missing from my life before, alright?” John lifts his tentacles from the rocking water, lets saltwater rain from them to the surface

“But this proves it, though,” Sherlock insists, his hand finding a tentacle and holding it, as if to check that it is solid, real. “This is where you belong – and I don’t – I can’t –”

“I think I get to decide where I belong,” John points out. “And furthermore, I think this is just more proof that you do things to me, Sherlock.” He tries for a light tone, but the realization behind the words sits too heavy for that. “I should never have been able to have a Tide the way I did, where I did, with you – but I did. And now… this.” Even as they both watch, the tentacles grow larger, more substantial, taking in more and more water weight. “This – I don’t know what this is, but it’s not a Tide, alright? I don’t have an urge to – to –”

“Copulate,” Sherlock provides, voice a hushed mumble, and John can’t help his smile.

“Yeah, that – there’s no drive for it – at least, no more than usual when I see you like this,” John tries to lighten the atmosphere again, but Sherlock’s gaze remains a pressing weight upon him.

“So if it’s not this place – if it’s not a Tide – then what is it?” Sherlock asks. “Why is this happening?”

John considers, tries to feel inside himself, where water was once before, and now again, where he feels fullest and emptiest, and finally decides on: “It’s because you’re here.” Sherlock frowns, but John continues before he can start to interrogate him: “This is not the first time I’ve been in the sea since I came ashore, Sherlock, and this _definitely_ has not happened before.”

Sherlock’s mouth is a perfect round ‘oh’ for several breaths before he voices it: “Oh.”

“Alright?” John asks. “Understand now?”

“Yes, John, of course I understand what you’re saying –” Sherlock begins testily, despite still straddling John, still clinging to his shoulders, and John holds back a put-upon sigh and presses on:

“Ok, but I need you to _listen_ , then, Sherlock. Because when I say –” John cuts himself off when he sees Sherlock’s expression shift.

“So….you don’t – you don’t want this?” Sherlock asks at last, gesturing at the grotto, at the water slowly filling it. “You don’t want something else?” His whole body is stiff, tense as he asks, “You’re sure?”

“Sherlock, if you’ll let me, I will show you what I want for the rest of our lives.” Sherlock’s eyes are wide when they meet John’s serious gaze. “And it’s you.”

Sherlock watches John’s face for a long time, really looking for the first time since John woke up, it seems – and perhaps he’d been afraid of what he might see there, but now that he’s looking, John can see the tightness leave his jaw and the corners of his eyes, as if a blow he’d been expecting had vanished, evaporated.

“You mean that,” Sherlock says, and his voice holds a quality of wonder, a breathless edge. It isn’t hope – it’s realization. He swallows, and it seems like he might be overcome, or close to it, his eyes darting side to side as his mouth slackens into an open hang.

“I do,” John says softly, and that seems to startle Sherlock out of whatever space he’d gone to in his head for a moment. After a long moment, Sherlock’s eyes slip closed and his head drops to rest against John’s, forehead to forehead.

“John,” Sherlock breathes into the air between them, and John tightens his arms around him in a fierce squeeze, and after a moment’s hesitation, he lets his tentacles come up to do the same, wrapping around Sherlock and just holding him, keeping him.

Sherlock grunts at the sudden increase in pressure, but John fancies he can see the beginnings of a pleased smile at the corners of Sherlock’s mouth. “Alright?” he asks, and Sherlock presses a quick kiss to John’s lips in answer.

A moment later, he comes back with another kiss, and then rests his cheek against John’s. John lets one of his hands drift up to bury itself in the curls at Sherlock’s nape. “I meant what I said earlier, you know. I love you,” he says quickly, quietly, before awkward hesitation can stop the words. They’re just new enough to his mouth that they sit oddly, emerge strangely, and leave John feeling as if he’s just miss-stepped – but then Sherlock makes a choked sound in the back of his throat and holds John even tighter, angling his face to press kiss after kiss to John’s jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth –

Sherlock’s mouth opens against John’s, and John licks into his welcoming, familiar heat, tasting Sherlock’s breath, the small sounds it carries, coming back again and again for more sensation, more depth, more of his mate.

“John,” Sherlock husks when they part for breath, “John why are you still wearing trousers?”

John laughs and shifts to sit up a bit, his tentacles repositioning to brace them both in this new position. “I was a little distracted earlier.” He frees up his hands and begins to wriggle the rest of the way out of his soaked denims. “We could also move up onto drier land,” John offers. “Or we could wait till we get home…?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “I….I would prefer not to wait,” he says, and John catches him blushing, and grins up at him. He lets a tentacle curl teasingly around one of Sherlock’s thighs, the tip slowly tracing the line of his inner thigh upwards.

“Is that so?”

“It – it is,” Sherlock’s breath hitches as the tentacle skirts where his cock is slowly hardening again, dips down to trail a light touch along his scrotum and perineum. “Unless you don’t want to –?” Sherlock says in a rush, and John brings their bodies close together again with a tightening curl of his other three tentacles.

“I want to,” John says, kissing up along Sherlock’s neck. His own cock is stiff and aching between his legs, brushing up against Sherlock’s skin or his own tentacles as they shift, and each time is brighter, sweeter than the last, layers of sensation building up.

He gets them settled on their knees, facing each other, still cinched together with his ventral tentacles, and begins the slow advance of his dorsal tentacles, their slit tips not nearly as swollen or needy as they were during his Tide, but still all too eager to explore his mate’s quivering skin.

The right one lays claim to Sherlock’s cleft first, draping over it before dragging along it to spread the slickness dewing along the tentacle’s spongy skin. Sherlock gasps as that sliding touch finally settles against the furl of his anus, and John has to remind himself to breath. Doing this during his Tide had been extraordinary, a brilliant blur of touch and taste and pressure – but now, without the influence of the Tide, John can savour each little moment as it happens, every little detail as it emerges. The smoothness of Sherlock’s skin changing from one stroke to the next, the difference in surface temperature the closer his tentacle tip ventures, even the differing strengths of Sherlock’s exhales breaking against his neck where he clings to John, already beginning to shake.

“John, stop teasing,” he demands, but the breathless quality of his voice steals most of its severity.

“I’m making sure there’s no sand anywhere…inconvenient, Sherlock,” John husks, head tilting back, because even though the stroking has a definite and extremely practical use, its effect is undeniable. Every stroke fills him with heat and want, until he has to let some of it out, has to pour and press it back into Sherlock’s skin with his fingers, with his lips, with any available patch of skin. He gets his mouth on Sherlock’s left nipple, tonguing and sucking even as his less occupied dorsal tentacle threads itself between Sherlock’s legs and nudges up against Sherlock’s testicles and begins to shift back and forth, slowly, and undulating pressure, the friction cut by the tentacle’s slippery skin.

Sherlock makes a strangled sound and pitches forward in John’s grip, seemingly boneless and rigidly tense all at once, incapable of holding himself up even as every muscle tightens in anticipation.

“For godssake, John, do it, do something – _ah!_ ” Sherlock’s whole body jolts when John’s tentacle tip dips into him, just breaching the furl, a quick lick and retreat.

“Like that?” he pants, and Sherlock whines into his neck, so John does it again, pressing into Sherlock’s heat, into his body, with quick little dabs of pressure, the slick, clean skin offering little resistance, even when Sherlock clenches in reaction.

“ _Cold_ ,” he complains, just like before, but this time he adds, “warm me up, John, get inside and – _ohhh_ yes –” Sherlock’s exhale becomes a long sigh, becomes a hitching, breathless shiver as John gets properly inside him, the slit of his tentacle splaying to hold Sherlock open and steady as the pale, soft tissue of the delicate taper slides into his heat, unfurling and contracting to lubricate its way forward, and Sherlock’s shivering now, his anus contracting against the cold protrusion to no avail even as he urges John on, trying to angle his hips to get John seated further in faster.

“God, Sherlock,” John manages tightly, shuddering as Sherlock writhes against his tentacle, his breath coming in shocked little sips, the sound of it driving John wild. “Oh god – there – there –”

The bloom of heat along his tentacle is glorious, a release all its own as water and blood rush to engorge his tentacle where it makes its way steadily deeper into Sherlock, who stiffens with a cry and freezes, rigid with pleasure. “--- _John!_ ” Sherlock all but squeaks, voice a high, barely-there whisper, and then shudders into seething, responsive motion as John gasps and begins to shunt into Sherlock, both their hips rocking with referred motion as John’s tentacle sets up a hard rhythm of thrust and retreat.

Before long, John finds himself lying almost all the way back, Sherlock over him on elbows and knees, shaking and swaying as shallow waves and John’s flesh have their way with him, relentless, claiming –

Sherlock comes with a keening cry, arms shaking, hips jerking, and John can feel little kisses of warmth against his stomach and ribs before Sherlock’s come is swept away by the grotto’s agitated wavelets. Somehow, it is those brief flares of sensation that tip John over into orgasm, his body stiffening, his tentacles tightening in their coils, his dorsal tentacle pushing home into Sherlock and pumping warm slick into him, less than during his Tide, but still enough that Sherlock gasps from the sensation, the breath punched from him with each new, powerful contraction.

“John – I –” Sherlock collapses against John’s chest and quivers, twitching as John’s tentacle finishes with him and withdraws, trailing thick strands of slick. “Oh god – John, that was –”

“Good?” John asks, breathless himself, and he laughs when Sherlock grins up at him, mouth barely able to form the shape around his panting.

“What about – the other one?” Sherlock asks, and the both twist to look at the unsated dorsal tentacle, obviously turgid compared to its partner.

“We don’t have to –” John begins, but then Sherlock reaches back a hand and runs it along the tentacle’s length with a thoughtful look, and John moans, going limp in the water from just one touch. It takes him a moment to realise that Sherlock isn’t merely stroking – he’s guiding the tip, his grip alternating loose and firm, an almost twist incorporated as he approaches the slit, and with each pass, clear fluid pulses out from the tip, running down Sherlock’s forearm, dripping into the water, and John is almost shaking from arousal by the time Sherlock presses the now-exposed pale tip to his much relaxed entrance.

“Aren’t you – don’t you need me to stop – or – or?” John gasps, and Sherlock urges him deeper with another deft, twisting, pull-stroke.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says, the tightness of his voice belying his sensitivity. “Your excretion seems to prevent inflammatory swelling.”

“Oh good,” John says faintly, not sure whether Sherlock meant that to be reassuring, or somehow sexy, because it fails spectacularly at both of those potential objectives – and at the same time it doesn’t matter at all. Sherlock unapologetically being himself mid-coitus is the most arousing thing John can think of, and noting the anti-inflammatory properties of an arousal-triggered excretion is a perfect example.

John groans, flinging an arm up over his eyes as Sherlock starts rocking back, fucking himself on John’s swiftly unfurling tentacle tip – and then they both gasp as the second stage heat and swelling fill Sherlock, and Sherlock stills his undulating, gasping again and again, and the shocked quality of his voice has John leaning up on his elbows to get a better look – and yes – Sherlock’s cock is filling again slowly, but undeniably.

“That – that can’t be comfortable,” John points out. Sherlock normally has one or two good orgasms in him, and then any other touch becomes too much.

Sherlock bites his lip though, shakes his head, cheeks flushed red, his hair a sweaty, salt-watery mess. “Actually, it feels – very –” he reaches down to touch it and gasps, doesn’t finish his sentence, just goes still, one had wrapped around his own cock, the other still holding onto John’s dorsal tentacle.

John, touch-addled as he is, has an idea.

“Come here,” he says, lying back again against the shallow slope of the inlet sand. The water is up to just below his ears now, although his feet are more than submersed. “Shift up – like that – yes,” he urges, guiding Sherlock to kneel between his spread legs. “Do you want to –?”

Sherlock’s eyes widen in understanding. “Now?” he asks, and John nods. He slides a ventral tentacle along Sherlock’s arm, demonstrating its slickness, before letting it dip down to prepare himself for Sherlock, who can only watch, gaping, his own stimulation seemingly forgotten. “John,” he rasps as John squirms at his own touch.

John’s never done this – he didn’t have the desire when he lived among his own kind, didn’t have the means until now, and _oh_ _god_ –

John’s touch against his own entrance is firm and familiar, despite the newness of the sensation. He knows how to move, knows what to expect to a certain extent, and soon he’s trembling, the heat of Sherlock around his dorsal tentacle competing with the coolness of his own external touch.

At last Sherlock seems to shake himself free of his daze, and he slips a hand into the water, between John’s legs, to join his tentacle, long fingers finding and plundering John’s sensitive spots before finding the slickened clench of John’s anus and pressing inside.

“ _Oh_ ,” John gasps, and lets his legs fall wider. “More – two, or three –” he wants, suddenly urgent to have Sherlock inside him.

Sherlock slips two fingers in, twists them, and then slips in three, staying just ahead of John’s readiness so that the stretch is sharp but not painful, the way they’ve found John likes to be breached. “Sherlock, I’m ready,” John says as he clamps down on the urge to thrash, “do it, do it now, please –”

“I should check for sand,” Sherlock teases, but doesn’t delay – he runs his thumb along the slick-coated skin, and when nothing abrades that touch, he hoists John’s lower body into his lap, a more difficult feat now that John’s water-logged tentacles have added themselves to the equation.

John slips his own tentacle out of Sherlock – “Just for now, don’t give me that look,” – and then Sherlock is lining up, pressing, pressing, until with a hiss, he clenches his jaw as his cockhead slips in. Immediately, John’s musculature pulls Sherlock deeper, and he chokes on his own voice at the feeling of being filled so suddenly, almost delirious from the sudden glut of pleasure that provides.

“John,” Sherlock’s voice is a tight quiver, “ _now_ –”

John lets his engorged tentacle slide home again, the splay of the base opening Sherlock as wide as possible to admit the swollen tip, and then they are joined, each in the other.

For a long moment, neither of them moves or makes a sound, the wavelets the only source of motion, of sound.

“I –?” Sherlock says at last, and John manages “ _Hnn_ ,” and then they are silent again.

“I’m going to move,” John says after a spell, and proceeds to lie still for another minute or so, his body singing with fullness, with pressure, with heat, with being held –

“Do it,” Sherlock hisses, manages a small twitch of his hips, and that sets John off.

His tapered tentacle, seated deeply inside Sherlock once more, begins a slow, back and forth jigging, the barest approximation of thrusting – but even that small amount of motion translates into a breathless cry for Sherlock and a tight grunt for John as transferred motion results in Sherlock shoving into him.

“Oh god,” Sherlock says, or maybe it’s John – but either way, the dam breaks: John’s tentacle finds its rhythm, begins building power in its thrusts once more, and Sherlock shoves back against its advances, then surges forward into John, who arches up to meet him, and at first the rhythms aren’t quite suited to one another, but then John’s other tentacles slip into place to support and guide, and the result is _glorious_. Sherlock is buried inside John, grinding and thrusting without ever really retreating, John’s inside Sherlock thrusting hard and fast, and every twitch of Sherlock’s pleasure becomes a clench or spasm of want and urgency for John. It’s a feedback loop, undeniable, irresistible, so intense that when their mouths meet, it takes all John’s concentration to give something resembling a kiss – and from Sherlock’s slack lips, it seems he’s in much the same position.

“Sherlock –”

“I’m close,” Sherlock breathes, the wonder in his voice somehow detached from the sweat and salt water and slick, the gasping and the churning.

Somehow, that calm observation tips John over, and suddenly his tentacle is swelling, stiffening, emptying itself to fill Sherlock –

And Sherlock is crying out to the rhythm of that, his hips stuttering and jerking, and then stiffening as his eyes squeeze shut, his voice a formless cry as heat floods into John, Sherlock’s hips kicking back into motion and pounding into John, urged on by John’s still-spending tentacle, and John -

“Oh – oh god, _Sherlock_ –” John stiffens into an arch, then thrashes into a secondary, internal release, his muscles clamping around Sherlock’s cock, trying to pull him deeper still, and he can feel each twitch and spurt of Sherlock’s come inside him, a silky wet heat, a part of Sherlock where it belongs.

With a gasp, Sherlock’s arms give out, and he slumps against John’s chest again, heedless of the water, simply flopping down against John’s skin and shaking, breathing, still twitching.

They both hiss as John slips free of Sherlock, and John feels the heat of his own come cloud into the water between his legs as it slips from Sherlock. After another minute, Sherlock lifts and turns his hips, sliding out of John, and John notices that the burn is not as intense as it could be.

John huffs a laugh.

“What?” Sherlock asks.

“You were right.”

“I’m always right,” Sherlock mumbles. Then he asks: “What was I right about this time?”

John giggles, high and breathless, as he says: “Anti-inflammatory properties.”

“Hmm. Yes.” Sherlock manages to sound superior and self-assured – then ruins it by joining John in laughter, his shoulders shaking, his voice a tired scrape of its usual sonorousness. “We should do this again,” Sherlock says, decisive, as if saying it makes it so.

Maybe it does, John thinks, still enjoying the curl and fizz of recent release beneath his skin.

“Kind of hard to do this in the tub,” John says, his laughter lapsing into tired huffing. Sherlock hums, his eyes flicking up from where he’s tracing spirals into John’s skin to meet John’s fond stare through his lashes. The resourceful gleam in his gaze has John grinning right alongside Sherlock’s smirk – he somehow doubts the size of the tub is going to deter Sherlock from trying to ‘replicate results’ as he would put it.

And then – well – there’s always the sea, John knows, never too far away in London. If this happened once, maybe it could happen again, a feast of saltwater and Sherlock to tempt John’s other form from dormancy.

“We’ll have to experiment,” Sherlock murmurs.

He hums, runs a hand along the nape of Sherlock’s neck too blissed out to voice his lukewarm worries about that particular sentence emerging from Sherlock’s mouth.

They both drift, resting, but John is too aware of Sherlock’s propensity for losing heat too quickly to let himself doze off the way he’d like. He rolls his head side to side to shake away the beginnings of sleep, is just about to suggest they move into the sun to start drying off when he hears it:

With his head to one side and one ear fully submerged, he can hear, in the far distance, familiar sound.

A familiar song, in fact.

John catches his breath, and Sherlock stiffens, instantly (if groggily) on the alert. “What?” he asks, his voice sharp under his fatigue.

“I hear them,” John whispers.

“Who – John?” Sherlock’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

“Put your ear to the water – tell me if you can hear it,” John urges. The song is deep, low, with flutes of higher sound spiraling up, a salutation.

Sherlock just about submerges half his head and holds very still for a long moment, frowning. “I can’t –” he says, but then, obviously, he _does_ , because his mouth drops open. “It’s very faint,” he says, “but I hear it.” He purses his lips before asking, “What are they saying?”

“They’re not singing words – it’s like choir scales. They’re greeting the day – the world – anyone who might be listening.”

“Could it be intended for you?” Sherlock wants to know. “Could they have heard – or sensed – us, just now?”

John snorts. “Unlikely – we’d have to make quite a racket for it to travel that far.”

They both fall silent and listen to the distant chorus again, something in it akin to whale song, but also wind and also the echoes of underwater ravines. John realises Sherlock is watching him after a moment.

“Would you want to see them again?” Sherlock asks. “We could maybe – or you could – I mean –”

“Sherlock –” John pulls him down into a kiss, tucking his tentacles around him to help keep him warm.

“What was that for?” Sherlock asks when John finishes with his mouth and his breath, although it doesn’t sound like he’s complaining.

“For basically volunteering to meet my family,” John says and then laughs when Sherlock goes very still, apparently only now realizing what he’s offered. “Not to worry – it’s a seven day journey underwater, and there’s no kind way to make it.”

At Sherlock’s confused expression, John explains: “If I visit, they’d want me to stay, and that’s never going to happen. They’d want to know when I was coming back, at the very least, and there’s no answer that would make them happy.” John sits up, still cradling Sherlock close, so that Sherlock’s torso is spared the chill of the water. “I said my goodbyes a long time ago – saying them again will do no one any good.”

“You are…content to never see them again?” Sherlock asks.

John smiles softly. “It’s enough to know they’re still out there. They have what the need. And well – I have you.” Sherlock huffs a laugh, but John can see the pleased smugness tucked away in the discreet corners of his mouth and eyes.

“We should get going,” John says, guiding them both to standing. “These will take a while to settle dormant again,” John says with a sigh, shrugging his tentacles.

“How long?” Sherlock asks.

“In this heat?” John considers. “Three or so hours, I should think.”

“Perfect – you’ll wear my coat as a cover, and we can be home by the time you’re presentable again.” Sherlock’s smirk and wink combo are cheeky as ever, but John finds himself laughing all the same.

“Only if you drive according to road regulations – I don’t fancy the idea of getting stopped for speeding while I have my kit out.”

“Dull,” Sherlock says, but he’s teasing – mostly, at least, John thinks. Sherlock goes to gather their things, handing John his dry shirt and sodden jeans before draping his belstaff over John’s shoulders.

“If you think driving safely is dull, then I’ll just walk home, thanks,” John says. “It’s only about 34hrs by foot, anyway, so –” John stops to frown at Sherlock’s shocked expression, then goes back over what he just said. _Oh_ , John thinks, and it’s unexpected, but that doesn’t mean he’s surprised.

Sherlock’s face is incandescent – disbelieving for only a moment, then delighted and painfully happy as he says: “ _Oh_.” John grins at that, and it becomes a beaming smile. He holds out a hand for Sherlock to take, and he does, his water-chilled fingers wrapping tightly around John’s.

“Shall we?” John asks, and they help each other out of the grotto, walk hand in hand up the deserted beach, pick up their discarded shoes and socks, now full of sand, and get back into their landrover.

And somewhere inside John, where up and down and compass roses make their nests, is part of John that knows where home is, and how long it will take to get there.

Together, they make the journey.

**Author's Note:**

> For the curious, the beach I chose for John's come-ashore point is here:  
> [Minsmere Beach](http://woodfarmbarns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Minsmere-300x200.jpg) which comes from   
> [this site.](http://woodfarmbarns.com/walking-in-suffolk-rambling-on/)   
> I was so happy to realise /after/ I wrote the stacked/rock grotto that this beach actually does have a cave somewhere along the beachfront - hurrah for reality lining up with plot needs!  
> You can learn about this nature reserve as well as surrounding protected areas here:  
> http://www.rspb.org.uk/
> 
> There are also two youtube videos I had on repeat to set the ambient sound mood during the writing of this:  
> [(for the pebble beach)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6DQlRG24c)   
> [(for the grotto)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JVP4rE-zxU)   
> Annnnnnd since my brain likes music while I write, I layered these sounds with the Blackmill pandora station. I highly recommend doing that for anyone who wants to have a lovely, chill, sensuous afternoon of relaxed listening/reading/writing/anything, really.
> 
> The quest-inclined can track me down on tumblr, where I also go by patternofdefiance.  
> <3<3<3


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